MIT Sloan Sports Conf, Friday March 2, 2012. Afternoon. The Live B.S. Report. Bill Simmons and Bill James. James’ top quote, for budding Sports Analytics types: “You have to know something that no one else knows.” [This might show how “‘80’s James is — isn’t the lesson of the Internet that you: a) don’t need to “know it”, you just need to know it’s there, where to find it, and be able to pull it all into the big picture? But then, what do I know?]

Selected Tweets below:

“There are lots of opportunities now but you have to know something that not everyone else knows…” Bill James

“We have taken a bucket of knowledge out of an ocean of ignorance.”

Joe Johnson appears on list of best league shooters from spatial perspective. Related: Analytics plummet into the ocean.

“A lot of baseball’s conventional wisdom becomes silly at age 13.” – Bill James on beginnings of his interest in stats

Bill James: I used my life to study baseball, not the things I was supposed to study

Job advice for would-be sports analytical types from Bill James: “You have to know something that no one else knows.” [this shows how ‘80’s he is]

James says A’s were using his analysis in the 90’s before Billy Beane

James: We overuse the term “cheating” like there was due process for substance use.

James on steroids in MLB, pre-testing: “I don’t see it as cheating. They simply wanted to be better baseball players.”

Bill James:”In a trial, you have thousands of facts but don’t know how they relate to the guilt of the accused. Baseball is like that.